Oh Captain, My Captain
by Secretly Manic
Summary: This is a CinderxThorne pairing that takes place directly after Scarlet ends. Rated M for some "adult " themes like language and almost-smut-stuff. Chapter 3 is up now!
1. Chapter 1

Cinder pushed herself out from under Rampion's engine, wiping accumulated grease off of her hands and onto her clothes, her mind flashing back to before all this began, and she was just a simple cyborg mechanic, with a controlling stepmother and her old Iko by her side. She even missed her too tight metal foot and the shunning looks from neighboring storekeepers.

It was weird to think that that was her normal life.

That was her happy life.

What total bullshit.

She walked around the spaceship like a nighttime security guard, securing the perimeter. She wasn't ready to let her guard down yet apparently. How could she be? She was a fugitive. If she wanted to get out of this mess alive, she could never let her guard down.

It was dark in most of the rooms of the ship, save for the captain's port and the kitchen where Scarlet and Wolf still stood, shamelessly giggling and flirting despite everything happening around them.

Cinder walked into one of the barracks and slumped onto the bottom bunk of a bunk bed, wriggling to the corner and wrapping her arms around her legs, engulfed in cold darkness. She stared into the black depth for a long time as thoughts stormed her mind, bombarding her with unwanted visions of a dystopian nightmare, a world ruled by the Lunar Queen because of Cinder's failure. Even just the thought of that happening seemed to send the rooms temperature down a few degrees and she shuddered with the frigid thoughts coursing through her veins.

As her night vision began to kick in, Cinder started making out the silhouettes of the few objects in the barren barrack; a nightstand, the legs of the other identical bunk bed across the room, a lamp that had burned out long before Thorne had ever stolen the ship, accompanied by a rugged second era bible.

The air stung her watering eyes, reminding her that she hadn't blinked in a long time. She closed her eyes and leaned her head back against the wall, but her eyes wouldn't stop watering, hot tears pricking at her lash line.

Then she realized that she was crying.

She was legitimately crying, one tear after another. No. You don't fucking have time for this, Cinder. Get yourself together.

The entire population of Earth is depending on you.

Believe it or not, that only made her tears fall faster. She sniffled and wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. "Fuck," she muttered to the shadows.

"Cinder?" a voice called from the darkness.

She couldn't see anyone there, and she knew it wasn't Iko.

Suddenly a head popped down from the bunk above her. Out of pure shock, fear, and her on edge vulnerability, Cinder let out a scream that could have been deafening, but faltered into more of a whimper, since her voice was cracked and dry, and threw a pillow at the unknown shadowed monster.

The pillow simply fell to the floor with a soft thud and the shadowed monster used their arms as leverage and swung down to her bunk, sitting next to her.

Cinder could make out a chiseled jaw line and his crystalline blue eyes sparked for a moment as he studied her. It was Thorne.

A shadowed monster? What was I thinking? Am I really so delirious?

"Cinder? Are you-Wait, are you crying?" Her heightened night vision and the small amount of light that there was helped her capture a look of concern on his face, but an eyebrow was raised quizzically, almost comically, assuring her that he wasn't entirely distressed.

She turned away, though it didn't matter much since she was sure he could barely see her anyways. She wiped away another tear that had accidentally escaped. "No," she lied blatantly.

"I know you think I am, but I'm not stupid, princess." Cinder could feel him flashing a small smile at her but there was a dash of hurt in his voice, because he knew she didn't believe him. But she did. Yes, he was obnoxious and narcissistic, but he was smart and handy, more than she gave him credit for. Without him, she wouldn't have made it as far as she had.

She winced and tried to hug herself into the wall. "Don't call me that."

"I don't-oh." He faltered. Then she realized he hadn't called her Princess, as in Princess Selene. Just princess. Like a term of endearment. Cinder let out a small, bitter snicker to mask her anguish.

They were silent for a moment, which is something that rarely happened within such a close radius with Thorne. It was nice, compared to him talking. Cinder found it slightly awkward though, and was sure Thorne felt the same way. At that very moment, he was probably wracking his brain for some half hearted joke to fill the silence.

But instead of an apathetic joke about the Lunars or the weird hybrid wolf men or Scarlet's flaming red hair, his arm wrapped around her and he pulled her closer to him, making her abandon the wall she had been trying to meld into. She buried her face into his chest and began weeping like a hysterical little girl. She tried to stop, refusing to take solace in Thorne's uncomfortable comforting, but couldn't. Of course. Once you start crying, you can't stop until you're literally too dehydrated to cry anymore. That's how it usually worked.

Thorne's hand raked gently through Cinder's tangled mess of hair. "It's going to be okay," he said simply. Affectionate, but simple. Neither of which described Thorne.

Well, simple did, actually. To her, at least, Thorne was really simple, a well oiled rig, with moving gears comprised of charm and charisma and a weird, alluring bewitchery that some girls (most girls) found attractive.

"No, it's not. Nothing is going to be okay. Levana is too powerful for me, Luna is too strong for us. Their hybrids will destroy us, and there's worse to come, I just know it. Queen Levana will control us, and it's all because of me. It's all my fault. Every fucking-" she halted.

What was she doing?

Venting?

To Thorne?

She silenced herself with a quiet mumble and pulled away from him, wiping her eyes. Thorne let go of her hair and sat in silence with her again. She expected him to leave. He'd tried his best. That's all you can do, right?

But he didn't. "Cinder, I'm sorry."

"You have nothing to be sorry for," she muttered.

"I have so many things to be sorry for. I haven't exactly been the best-"

"Don't even. Don't even say that. You have been the best to me. You've been better to me than anyone ever has. You've done more for me than you should have. And honestly, you should have left a long time ago. Because I'm afraid I've put you in a really dangerous place, and that there might be no getting out now."

"Who said I wanted to leave, princess?" he teased. Cinder could practically feel him winking.

"I don't want you to die because of me."

"I would never die because of you. I would die for you," he replied seriously. He could sense her disbelief. "I mean it, Cinder. I have nothing better to do with my life. I'm a fugitive. Do you honestly think I want to go back to my old life of being a cadet, even if I could? No, not after being here with you. Things are just better with you, even if the situation seems bad. And if it's this much better in this situation? Well, it has to be fucking amazing in a good situation. And I think I'd be willing to die for that."

Cinder tried to get over the shock of him not constantly joking, and failed miserably. She tried to push it out of her mind; she was afraid her system would overheat and she would shut down completely, which is really not what she needed right then. They sat in silence for yet another moment (these long pauses were beginning to severely unnerve her) while Cinder processed everything he had said.

"How about you don't die at all?" she finally countered.

An arm still around her shoulder he pulled her over to him again and kissed the top of her head. Cinder waited for a snarky remark about her dirty hair but was met only with a soft murmur. "I'll try my best."

She sniffled, let out a weak laugh, and subconsciously tried to smooth her hair. "I'm a mess. Always have been; always will be." Except now her cluttered mind and messy life wouldn't simply result in a customer's broken android's memory chip being lost; now it would result in a nearly apocalyptic war and millions of lost lives and human-wolf hybrid overlords.

His hand came in contact with hers and he snaked his fingers in between hers. He let out a small snicker and squeezed her hand, fingers intertwined. "I wouldn't have guessed that when I first met you."

She repositioned herself so that she could look up at him. "Really?" she asked, amusement scattered across her face.

Cinder pulled his hand that held hers over her stomach and lowered her head onto his lap; a small twitch of a confusion and surprised smile crossing his face as a shocked stutter escaped. "Uh-uhm, well, yeah. When I first met you-"

"I jumped through your ceiling," Cinder recalled as she nodded her head back and giggled.

He let out a deep throated chuckle and continued. "You were an independent, smart, beautiful cyborg prison escapee who wouldn't fall prey to my irresistible charm."

She got caught on the word "beautiful" as she was reminded of her Lunar gift controlling him. "I was using my Lunar glamour on you," she admitted out loud, assuring herself he already knew. She paused, then raised an eyebrow skeptically. "You know that, right?" Cinder smiled a little to herself as more memories of their first meeting flooded back to her.

She hadn't been trying to use her glamour on him, really, but he was extremely obnoxious. She wasn't trying to appear more beautiful than she really was, she really wasn't, it was just an uncontrollable side effect of her glamour. (Though it didn't help her self esteem when she managed to stop the glamour and he asked,"Are you the same person who was just here? You were way prettier a minute ago.")

"You didn't need to," he responded.

Cinder looked up at him, a smirk of flustered amusement casting shadows over her face.

"Cinder, you are crazy, and stubborn, and tough, and mean, and you shot me with a tranquilizer dart-"

"You were pointing a gun to my head!"

"-but," he continued, eyeing her acutely, "you are the most beautiful Lunar cyborg wanted fugitive lost princess mastermind I have ever laid eyes on."

"How many Lunar cyborg wanted fugitive lost princess masterminds have you met?"

"Just you. Hey, I'm trying to give you a compliment. Give me a break, okay?"

Cinder sighed, swearing she could see her breath in the cold, dark, recycled air. "Thank you." She stopped, thinking for a few moments before correcting herself. "Thank you, Captain," she smiled.

Cinder found herself shivering under the blankets of the bitter shadows and the thoughtful gaze Thorne's arctic blue eyes, even though his hands were warm.

"You're cold," he pointed out.

"No, I'm not."

"You said the same thing when I asked if you were crying."

"Well, I wasn't."

"You obviously were."

"Shut up."

He was right though. She was crying. But now, lying in the dark, her eyes dry, she realized the crazy part wasn't that he had caught her crying. The crazy part was that he had helped her stop crying. Thorne. If someone had told her a day ago that Thorne would be her anchor in her mental breakdown, she would have never believed it.

"C'mon," he said, lifting himself of the bed. "You need sleep." He held his hand out.

Cinder began reaching her hand out, but was haunted by the reflection of scarce and scattered light on her metal hand and jerked it back, her body locking up.

Instead she refused and let out a small whine like a child refusing bedtime, which she kind of was. "No. No, I'm not tired, it's fine, I need to stay up and I need to clear my head, and I need to make a plan, and I need to make sure Scarlet and Wolf are okay, and speaking of that, are you okay? I mean, I shot you with a tranquilizer-"

Before she could say any more, Thorne bent over and lifted her up bridal style. Cinder squirmed in protest but her aching bones were far too weak to really fight him; after a mere few seconds she fell limp and groaned with turmoil. She felt almost self conscious with Thorne holding her. I mean, I'm made of metal. I have to be kind of heavy, right? she thought.

The blankets on the top bunk were balled up from when Thorne had been laying there, but he managed to smooth them out while still holding her and threw her down onto it with a small grunt. Cinder let out a whine as her sore body hit the uncomfortable spring mattress, but found herself taking some odd form of comfort in the fact that the bed was still warm from Thorne being there.

Thorne lifted the covers up to Cinder's chin but she kicks the covers off of her and crossed her arms in defiance. "Tuck me in all you want, Dad, I'm not going to sleep." She lifted her hands to her head and rubbed her temples; in a surprisingly quick change of tone she said softly, "I don't think I can."

Cinder turned her head to the side as Thorne stood on his toes to be face-to-face with her. He kissed her forehead; a gesture that would have been sweet but instead just left her beaming in awe. She gaped at him, but the gape soon contorted into an intoxicated smile of someone who was clearly sleep deprived.

"Just try to get some sleep," he whispered. He turned his back to her and began to walk out of the room when her arm reached out and caught him by the collar. He whipped around, startled. "Yeah?"

Cinder's arm snaked around his neck and pulled him close to her. Their faces just inches away from each other, she could feel his cold, perpetually minty breath waver as his eyes looked at her innocently, questioningly. Her own heart was racing, but in lurching and staggered beats; her heart was literally skipping. Cinder's choppy breath intake was halted as Thorne put both his hands on either side of her face and hungrily pushed his lips against hers.

That was him, always wanting to make the first move.

She didn't kiss him back, not at first, she was too petrified and dumbfounded. But soon she closed her eyes and found herself melting into the kiss, her lips melding with his, their tongues stuck in a mash-up of a duel and a dance, battling for dominance, just like their entire relationship. She'd never really kissed anyone before; not counting the forced trying-to -save-the-world kiss she'd had with Kai at the ball. And she liked this kiss much better. It was warm and made her shiver at the same time, like fire in love with ice.

He broke away from the kiss abruptly and studied her face, looking for any sign of what she was thinking, if he had done something wrong, if he had done something right, some sort of guidance, but found her eyes too exhausted and foggy to get a clear reading.

Until he heard her whisper.

Her whisper faltered at first, and was unnervingly quiet, like a ghost's breathing, but he heard it.

"Can, um-Can you stay?"

A flash of a wicked grin crossed his face in the dark room, and he, somehow gracefully, managed to jump onto the top bunk with her, one arm on each side of her, like he was in the push-up position.

What little light there was seemed to shine directly onto his teeth, causing them to gleam in a devilish smile that returned Thorne to his mischievous default setting.

"Thank you, Captain."

"No problem, Princess."


	2. Chapter 2

Cinder gasped a quick breath as Thorne's cold lips pressed against the crook of her neck and trailed across her collarbone. His hands moved down to her hips and tugged her shirt up. Cinder lifted her arms as Thorne lifted her shirt over her head and threw it onto the ground. His teeth nibbled against her shoulder and she let out a giggle that seemed too girly for it to have come from her. Thorne must have thought the same thing too, because he pulled back, his eyebrows furrowed in amused confusion, then shook his head, smiled, and leaned forward to kiss her again.

With a swift movement Cinder ripped off Thorne's shirt as well and he didn't hesitate in taking off her clothes in return. She could tell he was well trained because he managed to get her clothes off faster than she could get his off. He pressed his hand into the small of her back making her careen towards him while he deftly unhooked and removed her bra with one hand.

His hands made their way to her waist and came in contact with her underwear, but stopped himself before he did anything. He leaned forward and sucked on her earlobe then whispered, "Are you sure about this?" His husky voice asked reluctantly, wanting desperately to not have to ask.

Cinder put her hands on his hips and used them to pull him towards her so their hipbones grinded together. "No." She grinned nefariously and wrapped her legs around him, Thorne trying to hold back a sinful moan.

One dexterous move by Cinder and she manage to change places with Thorne so she sat on top of him dominantly, like an alpha teasing an omega. And, to his disbelief, he was the omega. "How did you..," Thorne trailed off, bewildered at her strength, mind fogged and unfocused by Cinder's lips kissing down his chest and happy trail.

As euphoric as her lips felt on his body, he selfishly felt too strange not being in a place of dominance and control. He flipped her back onto the mattress and she let out a small giggle as he pinned her arms above her. He leaned down and pressed his forehead against hers before diving into another messy, rough, extremely eager kiss, one that felt weakly constructed and trembling, and Cinder knew he was about to cave into the temptation.

Cinder felt her chest tighten as his shaking cold hands snaked up and down the length of her body. Why was everything about him so cold? He was forceful too, and no matter how much she tried, she couldn't shake the feeling that she was merely another one of his manipulated victims. He was just a vampire, kissing her neck, thirsting for more blood.

"Thorne..," she murmured sluggishly into his unruly raven hair. Her voice faltered under the weight of his crystalline blue eyes. She bit her lip nearly to the point of broken skin to keep from crying out as he unwittingly began tightening his grip on her shoulders in tension. "I don't want to do this," she finally stated, struggling to find the right words, "if it-if it won't mean anything to you," she finally managed to say.

"Cinder. You don't mean anything to me. You mean everything to me. And for now, that's all that matters."

His deep, rustic voice rang in her ears. You mean everything to me.

No one's ever said something like that to her before. Her father died so soon after the adoption, her sister and mother hated her, Peony had died, Iko was nothing more than a personality chip, Prince-Emperor-Kai had been nothing more than a fling, maybe even less, that resulted in his hatred of her too. Those words, although they were coming from someone who was as seemingly untrustworthy and scamming as Thorne, made her feel safe, but ripped open and bare at the same time.

Maybe that's how he made all his victims feel.

But Cinder honestly didn't care.

Thorne's fingers traced her hipbones and circled her waist before following the trail of her pelvis and slithering back up the length of her body. She let out a small squeal and he gently put a finger to her mouth.

He hushed her tentatively. "I don't want Scarlet or Wolfe to hear us." He then stopped his hands for a moment, as if contemplating something. "Is this, um, is this your," he lowered his voice to a barely audible whisper, "is this your first time?"

She froze for a moment too. She hadn't even thought about that. After a few moments of looking into his inquiring eyes, she responded. "Yes."

"And you're new to this?" A tantalizing smile flickered over his face and shadows arose over his defined cheekbones and chiseled jaw. He raised an eyebrow. "I never would have guessed," he stated, an eery repetition of what he had said earlier when she told him she was a mess. His strangely gentle hands reached around her neck and pushed her chin up to face him. Her face reddened with a strange embarrassment. "Princess, are you blushing?" he teased.

With an arm on each side of her she was cornered onto the bed, caged by his body. He leaned down and kissed her, his kiss pushing her head back against the hard mattress. It wasn't anything like her kiss with Kai at the ball, the one where he didn't kiss back, the one that still made her cringe every time she thought of it.  
"This isn't right," she strained, turning her head away and trying to push away, but he only ended up kissing her jawbone.

"Princess, I will respect your wishes," he whispered nonchalantly into her ear, her skin absorbing his words.

Princess, I will respect your wishes.

"Let me please you, your Majesty."

Let me please you, your Majesty.

Cinder let out the breath she had been holding in a gasp as he kept kissing her.

Getting lower.

And lower.

And lower.


	3. Chapter 3

He began reaching to pull down her underwear when a loud sound startled them out of their trance-and onto the ground. The surprise of the sound over the speaker in the ship sent them toppling over the edge of the bunk and onto the hard, cold floor of the ship along with the blanket they had been wrapped in, with a loud crash.

"What the fuck was that?" Thorne asked finally, still laying on the floor with Cinder, rubbing his lower back that had taken the weight of the fall.

"That was, um, me," the voice said over the speaker. Iko.

Thorne's eyes widened as he came to the same realization as Cinder: Iko had heard everything they had said and done.

"Well, fuck," Cinder muttered to herself.

"Sorry to... interrupt."

She didn't say anything else though, because she had done exactly what she had been hoping to accomplish: she just wanted to stop them from doing anything because she would inevitably hear it, even if Wolf and Scarlet didn't.

Thorne and Cinder didn't say anything either. They lied in silence on she ships floor, entangled in each other and the blanket. It wasn't uncomfortable, as Cinder might have expected it to be. It was peaceful; because, in the midst of her becoming the most wanted fugitive in the world, and her entire planet on the brink of another World War, she found herself in a situation like this, half naked and on the floor because she fell off a bunk bed.

A goofy grin contorted onto her face as she thought about that, and after that grin came a bout of uncontrollable giggling. Thorne eyed her suspiciously as she started laughing, but found himself laughing with her.

"Did I miss something? What's so funny?" Iko inquired.

But by that point, Thorne and Cinder were too wrapped up in each other and their own laughter to even hear her. Neither one of them entirely sure what the other was laughing at, or why they were laughing themselves. They were laughing for a multitude of reasons that didn't even make much sense. They were laughing at all the bad things that they had gone through, and all the good things that had come out of it, and the current situation that they were in right now. But they were laughing, nevertheless, for the first time, for Cinder at least, in what seemed like weeks.

Cinder's laugh was great, Thorne realized. It was beautiful and melodic in ways he couldn't quite place. And despite everything around them, it was real. Despite all the darkness that surrounded them, in this room and in real life, it was light and reflective, contagious in and of itself. She didn't need her Lunar glamour to be the most stunning thing he had ever laid eyes on. Her laugh is what caught him on her, what pushed him over the edge. He wished he heard more of it.

Thorne's laugh was great, Cinder realized. It was low and deep and real, somehow without the snarky attitude he always dragged around, but also somehow capturing everything he was. It was real, and she just now realized that he hadn't been doing much real laughing lately either, because she would have recognized a sound like this. It was the type of laugh that resonated from his chest, that now, laying her head against his chest, she could feel, like it was coming straight from his heart. She wished she heard more of it.

"You're hysterical," Thorne said, wrapping an arm around her.

"No," she replied, her laugh dying down. "Just happy."

"And maybe a little bit tired?"

She stifled a yawn as she fluttered her eyelashes, trying to get her eyes to stay open so she could keep looking at him, but she just ended up closing her eyes anyways. "Very tired," she agreed.

"You need sleep," he said, repeating what he had said earlier.

This time, Cinder didn't deny it. Thorne reluctantly got up from the floor and picked Cinder up as well, this time putting her on the bottom bunk, as if he was afraid she might fall off the top bunk again.

She crawled under the covers and Thorne did too. And that was that. There wasn't any lust, any dire urges as Thorne wrapped his arm around Cinder again. Just some pure form of euphoric bliss. And both Thorne and Cinder seemed to realize that, while the lust between them had vanished between Iko's interruption and their clouded tiredness, there was still definitely something there. Some other emotion that they couldn't quite place.

"Thorne," Cinder began, her exhaustion beginning to take a toll on her, "is it just me, or is this a big moment in our relationship?" she asked, repeating what he had said the first day they had met in his cell.

Thorne grinned in return and held her tighter before tilting his head back and closing his eyes, a smile still on his face. "I think it is, Cinder."


End file.
